Jerusalemite, Irishman team for Shalit video

NEW YORK (JTA) — An Irish Christian and a Jerusalem psychotherapist have collaborated on a YouTube video honoring captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

The video by Jim Clint, a singer-songwriter, and Elchanan Berkowitz was uploaded to the media-sharing site last week.

Clint said he was moved to compose a song for Shalit as the fourth year of the Israeli’s captivity under Hamas drew near last June.

Berkovitz, 78, had made a photo montage to mark the same event but needed a song to go with it.

“I found someone in the Northern Ireland Friends for Israel group who said that a singer named Jim Clint had written a song for Gilad,” Berkovitz, a member of a Jerusalem community TV group, told the Arutz Sheva website.

The two joined forces to produce the video, which has amassed 3,649 views on YouTube.

Clint, a Northern Ireland resident, lived in Tel Aviv for nearly 10 years and has his own connection to terror in Israel.

"I have witnessed myself the aftermath of a suicide bombing in the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem in July 1997," he told Arutz Sheva. "I couldn’t help thinking that in all the waves of criticism which is engulfing Israel at the moment, no one was saying anything about a young Israeli in Gaza, deprived of every human right."

Clint said he wrote the song, “Take a Little Time,” because “like millions of others around the world, I want to give the Shalit family encouragement and hope."